Chinatown Galleries: Sam Lee

Pipo Nguyen-Duy & The Parody of the American Gaze

        In 1975, Douglas Crimp declared postmodernism a movement of young artists "committed to radical innovation," in October, the hallmark journal of the postmodern era. Thankfully, while the writings of Douglas Crimp have diminished and the journal October has dissolved, postmodern innovation and radicalism can still be found in the heart of Los Angeles's Chinatown. At the Sam Lee Gallery, the current exhibit of Pipo Nguyen-Duy's photographs conveys an inspired contemporary application of postmodern artistic techniques. In each photograph, the photographer has staged his subjects and manipulated his work in such a manner that allude to previous postmodern artistic renderings such as Cindy Sherman, but also engage in a new social critique. Pipo Nguyen-Duy uniquely addresses the confounding realities in Vietnam today, and his photographs highlight both the country's natural beauty and unsettling hardships. These representations contain "the good, the bad, and the ugly" in contemporary Vietnam and present the beauty of Vietnam and the Vietnamese as disturbingly tainted. Through manipulated imagery, America’s physical and social mutilation of the Vietnamese landscape and people are subversively alluded to in Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s work.  Thus, just as Cindy Sherman uses her staged photographs as a means to explore the implications female objectivity, Pipo Nguyen-Duy engages in the same postmodern critical process. Pipo Nguyen-Duy transgresses from Sherman’s parody of the male gaze to one of the American gaze. As the viewer, often American, is tempted to grasp the inherent beauty of Vietnam, but confronted with undertones of a damaged reality.

    The staging of Pipo Nguyen-Duy human subjects is the primary means in which these photographs are parodic images. Particularly in the photos with the amputated individuals, these graphic pictures disrupt the viewers’ inclination to interpret the portraits as a glorified representation of Vietnam. From the man missing both legs to the individual with mutilated facial features, these subjects are highly personal, humanizing the scars of the Vietnamese population. Even the other portraits, such as the little girls standing in the water, present individuals in a surreal manner, with stark facial expressions, rigid postures, and ambiguous emotions. The inherent parody of these representations is constructed through Pipo Nguyen-Duy jointly representing both natural despair and delight. Disturbingly, one of the figures most disabled, a double amputated man, lies joyfully smirking in his portrait, as if pleasantly portraying his own physical limitations. Less hopefully rendered is the other individual who missing both legs, with this man glaring troublingly into the sky, as if to seek divine salvation. These incongruent portrayals highlight both the inherent optimism of these individuals but also the dysfunctional desire of viewer, who can perceive superficial joy and progress, but also profound physical pain and shared struggle.

    In addition to the contrived posing and gestures of Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s subjects, the photographic parodies are deeply rooted in the postmodern artists’ critique of realism. Each image at the Sam Lee Gallery presents the viewer with vivid, crisp, colorful imagery that is suggestive of a natural reality. On close inspection, the colors contain artificial undertones with the vegetation unnaturally neon green and the sky obliquely gray. Through these simulated environments and staged positions, Pipo Nguyen-Duy presents the landscapes of Vietnam as surreal. The bizarrely conveyed depictions temp the viewer into perceiving an aesthetically pleasing Vietnam, however, even the subtly manipulated elements of Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s photographs suggest a contradictory reality and the false representations facilitated by the photographic medium.

    Roland Barthes once said, “La réalité se montre, le reel se démontre,” which translates to “reality is displayed, “the real” is demonstrated. This distinction has clearly been applied to Pipo Nguyen-Duy’s work. With smirks, bizarre scenarios, and lush, natural landscapes, these representations of Vietnam mock American viewership. While inherently inclined to perceive “the reality” of modern Vietnam, and its postwar progress and beauty, altercations to this photography unpack “the real” Vietnam, fraught with underlying issues and physical scars. Therefore, Pipo Nguyen-Duy has inspiringly utilized the tactics that first emerged a quarter century ago with artists like Cindy Sherman and Robert Lungo. Using staging and manipulation, this photography portrays the modern contradictions of Vietnam and the American gaze. Just as Barthes articulated, Pipo Nguyen-Duy depicts not what is an objective reality, but what are the confounding, personal struggles for Vietnam.